Anirban Dam
*
A body in stasis is just memory decaying,
you say. It’s probably an article she read last night
I tell myself, dismissing your statement whilst
buttoning your shirt;
the length of your hair partially concealing
your left shoulder. I ask if that’s a scar
or a birthmark under your clavicle?
You shrug and murmur event boundary.
Walking through a doorway triggers the brain
to forget, you continue. The brain compartmentalizes
events, cuffs them within rooms,
then tucks it away.
In that sense, we are dossiers dancing
in and out of doors, cuffed to the possibility
of forgetting. You, a catalogue of circumstances,
I, a cabinet full of lost chances.
*
Downstairs, the kettle wheezes
and the day is yet to assume its shape
(unlike the small of your back)
your dimples hoard crumbs of light
that stretches within the expanse
of this room, we might not
even remember. Yet time,
like a gentle scalpel undresses
your body with enough precision
for my hands to hover over your birthmarks —
as if clocks longing to move in retrospect.
I keep you to myself.